WITec

https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/spec_w/enhance

Dr. Miriam Boehmler: Introduction to Raman Microscopy

Dr. Lauren Tetard: Advancing the Understanding of Heterogeneous Biological Systems with Raman Confocal Microscopy

Dr. Ricardo Faccio: Raman Imaging as a Tool in Materials, Pharmaceutical and Biological Sciences

3:00 – 4:45 Session 2: Materials Sciences

Dr. Thomas Beechem: “Photos” from Flatland: Multimodal Raman Imaging of Ultrathin Materials

Dr. Joan Redwing: Integrated Synthesis-Spectroscopy System for Air-Sensitive 2D Materials

Dr. Ute Schmidt: Advancing Battery Development and Materials Science with Raman-SEM

As Raman imaging microscopy has become a widely utilized chemical characterization method, an ever-growing range of applications has emerged that demonstrate its potential for leading-edge research and development. This virtual conference will feature speakers from academia and industry highlighting the benefits that Raman microscopy can offer a variety of scientific fields, and their talks will be grouped into two sessions: Life Sciences and Materials Science.

Learn about the fundamentals of enhanced 3D Raman imaging at the highest spectral and spatial resolution

Be introduced to the possibilities of correlative Raman microscopy investigations

Become familiar with state-of-the-art application examples from various trending research fields

This symposium is intended for scientists from academia and industry who are interested in fast, nondestructive, and precise sample characterization.

Analytical scientists who want to extract more detailed structural and chemical information from their measurements.


Dr. Miriam Böhmler was awarded a PhD in Chemistry from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, after working on sub-diffraction limited microscopy and spectroscopy (tip-enhanced Raman and photoluminescence spectroscopy). Dr. Böhmler joined WITec GmbH in 2017 as a Senior Applications Scientist and in 2020 became the Director of Applications. She possesses wide-ranging expertise in Raman imaging and spectroscopy, near-field and super-resolution optical technologies
such as tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, and nanoFTIR spectroscopy.




Associate Professor, University of Central Florida


Dr. Lauren Tetard is an Associate Professor at the NanoScience Technology Center and Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida. Her group focuses on developing new nanoscale imaging and spectroscopy approaches to explore complex systems and functional materials related to sustainability.




Director Applications and Support, Facultad de Química, Universidad de la República 

Prof. Ricardo Faccio obtained his Chemical Engineer Degree in 2003 and his PhD in Chemistry in 2007 at Universidad de la República, Uruguay. He has also performed complementary studies at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste (Italy), Argonne National Laboratory (USA), and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain). Prof. Faccio is currently a Full Professor of Physics in the Faculty of Chemistry at the Universidad de la República.




Assoc. Prof. of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University


Thomas Beechem leads the Specere Laboratory at Purdue, which focuses on leveraging nanoscale phonon-physics to create thermal, spectroscopic (i.e., sensing), and infrared solutions. He joined the faculty of Purdue’s Mechanical Engineering Department in August 2021 after spending over 12 years at Sandia National Laboratories. He has authored more than 85 archival publications and holds 5 patents. In 2017, he was named an associate editor for the Journal of Heat Transfer.




Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering, Penn State University 

Joan Redwing is a Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering at Penn State University. She serves as the Director of the 2D Crystal Consortium, an NSF Materials Innovation Platform (MIP) national user facility focused on the synthesis and characterization of 2D materials. Her research focuses on crystal growth, epitaxy and characterization of electronic materials. She is an author on over 300 publications and holds eight U.S. patents.



Ute Schmidt studied Physics at Babes Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and obtained her PhD from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. During her postdoctoral scholar position at Karlsruhe and North Carolina State University in Raleigh, USA, she continued to work with metal deposition on different substrates with STM and AFM. She was previously a project manager at Molecular Imaging Corp. and has been an Applications Manager at WITec since 2003

Webcasts

Tuesday, June 28, 2022 at 1pm EDT | 6pm BST | 7pm CEST

Confocal Raman imaging microscopy is a powerful, versatile, and increasingly common analytical technique capable of quickly identifying the molecules in a sample and visualizing their physical distribution in three dimensions. The conference will give a comprehensive overview of current technologies and their latest applications.

Imaging Enhanced II: Today’s Raman Microscopy Applications

Articles

Modern Raman Imaging Techniques

	Microparticle analysis techniques are rapidly evolving in response to demands for regulatory oversight, especially with regard to microplastic pollution. Certain steps are common to any effort to analyze microparticles; They need to be found, classified, individually investigated, identified, and quantified. An automated combination of confocal white-light microscopy and Raman spectroscopy is the most promising approach for these measurements. The following guide describes using such an instrument, the WITec alpha300 R confocal Raman microscope equipped with ParticleScout, to characterize a particulate sample.

1. Choose a sample containing Raman-active microparticles and carry out a large-area survey.

	A confocal white-light microscope can use bright- or dark-field illumination to see particles in contrast to the substrate or filter on which they're located. If the area of interest is larger than the microscope objective's field of view, image stitching can automatically combine many areas into a single image. Particles of widely varying height can be accommodated by focus stacking, which acquires images at several focal distances and compiles them to ensure that all particles show sharply defined edges for recognition by software.

2. Select criteria to categorize particles and guide the Raman measurement.

	The WITec ParticleScout advanced analysis tool allows located particles to be categorized and ranked in a list by physical properties such as area, perimeter, minimum or maximum Feret diameter, elongation, and many others. The outlines of the selected particles are then used to create a mask that guides the subsequent measurement while omitting all other particles and the empty space in between, which drastically reduces measurement time.

3. Examine the specified category of particles at the individual level.

	Raman spectroscopy can detect photons whose energies are shifted slightly from the excitation wavelength to serve as a unique "fingerprint" for each chemical component. The method is nondestructive and doesn't require specialized sample preparation.


	Large-area bright-field (A) and dark-field (B) views of a mixture of microplastic particles generated by image stitching. The particles are displayed as a two-color mask (C). From every particle, a single Raman spectrum is acquired (E-F). The chemical compositions of the individual particles are then identified.

	The mask created in the previous step guides the excitation light to the particles of interest so the microscope can gather the shifted light and acquire a Raman spectrum from each one. TThis information is stored with the location and category of each particle for further analysis.

4. Chemically identify each particle of interest.

	The Raman spectra from each particle can be evaluated manually or using advanced software. For researchers looking for a particular material, the spectra, with their distinctive peaks and contours, will provide all the information required to identify the particles. When the composition of a sample isn't as well established or there are many materials of interest, an integrated Raman database managment software such as WITec's TrueMatch can help expedite identification.

5. Compile the identities of each particle in a table that provides a quantitative sample overview.

	With particles chemically characterized, the results can be consolidated and described quantitatively in the form of a table or histogram. This summary shows the researcher exactly what is in their sample, broken down into categories that they selected. It is the detailed and comprehensive answer to the question, "What does this sample contain, and in what proportions?"

WITec

Articles

Imaging Enhanced II: Today’s Raman Microscopy Applications

Modern Raman Imaging Techniques

Fast Microparticle Analysis with Raman: Five Steps to Characterization and Quantification